


Losing Sleep

by SoniaVice



Category: Hockey RPF, Sports RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Carolina Hurricanes, Multi, Polyamory, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-29
Updated: 2014-09-29
Packaged: 2018-02-19 07:00:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2379146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoniaVice/pseuds/SoniaVice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jeff Skinner's storybook rookie year and then the rest of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Losing Sleep

**Author's Note:**

> AU in which Eric Staal is married, but his wife is a fictional creation. This is not a story about infidelity.
> 
> Follows the general outline of reality, games played, people and places, etc. Dramatic licence has been taken where necessary, particularly in regards to injuries.
> 
> I've completely ignored the World Championships as is my birthright.

Jeff Skinner's storybook rookie year. Someone used that headline. Somewhere. They must have.

Because it _was_ a bona-fucking-fide fairy tale. He was drafted to a team trying to move up so he got to play in the show right away, he scored in his first game, he played better than he'd ever allowed himself to imagine, he made the all-star team. He didn't fuck it all up. And he fell like a metric tonne of bricks for his captain. 

Even that didn't fuck anything up.

Andy Steffordson used to say there were two kinds of guys in hockey, guys you can fool around with and guys you can fuck. Andy was an optimist and a cynic.

Okay, there's actually a lot more than two kinds. Sure, there's guys you can fuck, and fool around with, and then there's guys who literally can't see gay. You could drop to your knees and they'd never notice. Then there's the assholes who can see the gay just fine, they just want to beat it out of you. In between, there are a lot of guys you can get away with flirting with.

It's fun. For everyone—the rest of the guys get to chirp you over it, and you can have a crush on someone without it staying bottled up and getting weird. You've got all this emotion in you and you can just find the nearest tall, blond, beautiful-hockey-playing, built like a brick shithouse, gorgeous man—and the thing about hockey is there's a surplus of those—and you can smile and blush and laugh and touch too much and stand too close. And it's all okay.

And he, your hypothetical straight god of hockey, can crush on you right back, and that's when it's awesome. He can wrap a protective arm around you and say things just risque enough to make you blush because he likes you all flustered. He can worry over you and keep you close in a way that is not at all like a brother and everyone thinks it's adorable. 

Everybody laughs. Or rolls their eyes or frowns in disapproval, and frankly you're doing them a favour, because they're the kind of guys who want something to frown over that isn't their likelihood of ever making the playoffs.

It was such a beautiful ride. Like being high all the time with no fear of ever crashing. Even when things went to shit on the ice—hell, especially when it went to shit—all he had to do was tilt his head, and Eric Staal would smile at him and say something outrageously filthy about the other team. 

He was hooked on all of it—hockey and life and winning and losing, because you can't love winning unless you lose just enough to keep it sweet. But mostly Eric Staal—200 proof and no hangover, guaranteed.

People, well, Cam Ward mostly, but people made comments to Jeff right from the beginning. Little reminders not to let it get out of hand. "Don't forget, Jeff, Eric's got a wife." And come on, he knew that. And the guys, most of the guys, seemed to get that it wasn't about that. It wasn't _real_. 

Obviously if Eric hadn't been married they might have, if Eric had been into it. You can't assume that. Flirting does not always correlate to wants to fuck or even wants to fool around. Hardly ever, in fact, which is the weirdest thing about straight guys. And straight guys are really weird.

Sometimes the things people said _were_ more like warnings. "Wait til you meet her," said in these ominous tones, like she was a shark and Jeff was a little fish who was going to get chomped. 

It took him a while, come on, he was more than a little head up his own ass there, he won the fucking Calder. Egomania was pretty much required when you're that good that young. Eventually, he realized the rest of the guys didn't like her very much. The frowny disapproving types particularly.

Add in Jeff's general sense of how he wasn't exactly an off the rack model as an NHL player and he was expecting to like her. From the few details he'd picked up, she sounded like his sisters. Sort of. Lawyer: yes, hockey player: no. And the shocked look on Ward's face when he asked that was pretty funny. 

He figured if the straight guys all got squirrely about her and Eric obviously loved her, what with the marrying her and all, she must be fantastic. Jeff was prepared to love her exactly the same way he loved Eric.

He wasn't even thinking about meeting her is the funny thing. Eric was having his end of season party and Jeff was trying to gauge how hungover he was willing to be when he flew back to Toronto the next day. He was also trying to psych himself up to be okay with not seeing Eric for a whole summer.

Okay, truth. He had let the thing with Eric cross a line or two. They never actually did anything. Mostly because Jeff made sure they always had a chaperone on road trips: roommates, teammates, flirty waiters, hot guys in bars, anyone handy and amused enough by him to stick around while Eric tried hard to make them go away. 

But their thing did sort of drift into _Thing_ territory, and it started to be less like a candy rush and more like a sick feeling of falling. Jeff knew he had to get over that. He was planning a summer of _holy shit, I'm in the NHL, fuck me now_ fun that he was sure would take care of things. He just had to get the hell out of Raleigh first.

She was in the kitchen when Jeff met her for the first time.

She was facing away, doing something at the sink. There was sunlight, the bright syrupy, hot sun of the South that he wasn't used to yet, turning her hair a kind of red gold. She was wearing silk in orange and red and ochre. 

Everything about her was vivid and bright and expensively sophisticated. She had on gold chunky jewelry that was almost rude in how big and brash it was. Not the standard big diamonds that try to be flashy and tasteful both, no delicate little necklace that manages to say look at my tits but totally not in a vulgar way. 

She was not off the rack. 

She did have legs that went on for ever and a body that looked to Jeff's practised eye like it could have played hockey just fine. She was, he found out later, exactly his height when she kicked off her shoes.

She was hot. He was so shocked he felt that, he fell onto the stool at the breakfast bar.

She turned around to look at him, one eyebrow raised as she dropped a wedge of lemon into the drink in her hand. She had long nails and a french manicure and a simple wedding band.

She looked him up and down and smiled at him with enough teeth to say shark. "You can't possibly be drunk already."

"Um, no," he said, blushing. Of course he was blushing. 

"Because that's one of the tests you have to pass at the combine, right, see how much beer you can hold and still tie your skates."

Jeff burst out laughing. 

She took a long drink and looked at him exactly like the guys at the combine did. Maybe a little less like he was a piece of meat, but just as dubious as to his value. She knew who he was. Obviously.

"Not much of a beer guy," Jeff explained, to have something to say. 

She smiled at him, slow and knowingly, like they were both in on the joke. Jeff wasn't really sure he knew what the joke was, though—women being only marginally less weird than straight guys. She raised her glass. "Want one of these?" 

"Sure," and then, because he was a moron, "um, I'm kind of underage though."

"More than kind of, kiddo. Did you drive?" Jeff nodded and she held out her hand, tipped her chin up. Jeff fished out his keys and tossed them. She snatched them out of the air and tossed them into a glass bowl on the counter. The metal rang against the glass and Jeff stared at it sitting there amongst the litter of fruit peels and empty glasses. 

There was a smart play here that he could see clearly. Go over there, get those keys and leave. Go directly to Toronto, do not pass go. 

She handed him a drink that looked just like hers. He took a long sip, just like she did and tasted lemon and gin, bitter, sweet and cold. It was awesome.

"This is awesome," he said and smiled at her. Like he did when he smiled at Eric. Intentionally. He wanted to see if it worked on her. She answered him with an amused quirk of her lips.

"Elle," he said.

She'd been speaking, saying something about nothing, they'd been talking about Raleigh and Toronto—not about where she was from, which was Indiana, because she didn't want to talk about that, Jeff could tell. 

He wanted to say her name, he'd never said it. He'd said that out loud too, he realized belatedly.

"Loretta," she said with a rueful twist of her mouth. Her mouth was beautiful, mobile lips, thin and expressive. He kept that in.

"Who's Loretta?" he asked when he caught up again. He kept getting lost in looking at her, and he knew she noticed, because he hadn't ever had to learn to be coy with his regard.

"I am. It's my name, which I hate, so I shortened it."

"So, it's like the letter L then, cool."

"Only pop stars and hockey players can go around calling themselves by single letters, so I made it into a name."

"Elle Staal," he said.

"Doesn't exactly trip off the tongue, does it?"

"I like it," Jeff said.

"Is there anything I could say right now that you wouldn't like?" 

And the thing is, the killer thing, is that she didn't say it in this playful way. She was amused, almost laughing, more at him than with him, but she didn't play with him. She was never not serious. 

"Only if you said I couldn't have another of these," Jeff said and held out his empty glass. He pulled the glass back close to his chest. Baiting her to come closer. She had stayed all the way over by the counter, leaning against it casually the whole time. If she were Eric she'd be right there beside him leaning in close, close enough to smell her perfume, and know what this lemony gin thing she was feeding him tasted like on her breath. 

She plucked the glass out of his hand and stepped back quickly. She had a long reach. 

"You're tall," he said, half complaint and half admiration. He'd gotten a tantalizing hint of lemon and spice, but the scent didn't linger.

She pushed his fresh drink towards him and settled back against the counter. Her arms were crossed across her body and the sun glinted off her bracelet. Jeff wanted to see it up close, touch it, feel the warmth of her body in the gold, touch her skin while he was there. But he couldn't figure out how to say that. 

What the hell did you do with women? With Eric he'd have just crowded in and grabbed, made a joke about it and likely would have ended up in a really nice headlock.

"What kind of law do you practice," he asked when he gave up trying to say, "Come over here so I can touch you."

"Contracts, boring stuff," she said dismissively.

Jeff grinned at her, and leaned forward to lean on his elbows. He was sitting in a patch of sun and he was hot and buzzed and he wanted to lie down like a cat and purr. Maybe she'd pet him. "Yeah, that's a lie," he said. 

Elle raised her brows, inviting him to explain himself. 

"Bet you're a shark. Have to be. Eat all the little fish. Everybody thinks trial lawyers are hot shit, but tort law is where you really get the other guy on the boards and fuck him over."

She laughed. A good laugh, like it was at what he said, not at him. He wanted to do it again. He already had Pavlovian responses to Eric and goal lights, what was one more?

"How do you know that?"

"My mom told me," he said, and it worked, she laughed again, deeper this time and she came closer, almost close enough for him to touch her beautiful warm hand.

"Your mom's a lawyer? That explains a lot actually."

"My dad too, and my sister."

"But not you?"

"I'm in the other family business," he said. "We all played, my sisters and my brother and me, except I used to be a figure skater. I had to pick."

"Wouldn't it have been easier to stay in figure skating," she said.

Jeff shook his head vehemently, except it made him dizzy so he stopped. Everybody thought that. Everybody really didn't know how wrong they were. "'Cause I'm gay? No way, hockey was the right choice, besides," he looked at her until she smiled at him a little, inviting him to continue, "hockey players, come on, you know what I mean."

"Yeah, Jeff, I think I know exactly what you mean." She was really beautiful when she was thinking filthy thoughts. Not that he knew exactly what she was thinking, he was just extrapolating.

"Skinny, there you are," Eric said and pushed right up close and wrapped him in one of his all-body hugs. Now it was weird. 

It hadn't been weird before when they were in their little kitchen bubble, just him and Elle and her fabulous lemony drinks. Eric was in hockey world in its own bubble, tucked of in the back of his mind, and it was totally not weird until the bubbles crashed together and burst. He looked at the floor to see if there was bubble stuff all over. 

"Holy shit, Elle, you've got him totally wasted."

Jeff watched Elle just shrug at Eric and smile. She didn't look very sorry. They looked at each other and did that thing married people do where they talked with their faces. 

"Hell, Skins, did she feed you lawyer-strength drinks?" Eric said and kind of shook him a little like he though Jeff was passing out or something embarrassing like that.

"This last one doesn't have any gin in it," Elle said, and Jeff gasped at her betrayal which made them both laugh at him. He wanted to do that again, make them laugh together like that. 

"Maybe you should put him down for a nap in one of the guest rooms," Elle suggested, and Jeff wanted to complain that he wasn't a baby, but he was kind of swaying back into Eric's warm, familiar body and he never really got around to saying it.

"You should come too," he said to her and she just shook her head at him. But he could see her eyes sparkling, he knew how to see that now, when she thought he was funny or cute or maybe just laughable.

"I think I have a houseful of guests to look after," she said.

"Oh, yeah," Jeff said while Eric was trying to make him walk. "Hockey players. Don't leave them alone with the good furniture."

"Your mom tell you that too?" Elle said and smiled at him like he was wonderful.

"Yeah," Jeff said and he thought she was wonderful too.

 

He woke up in a dark and silent house and found his keys in the glass bowl in the kitchen. They smelled of lemon. 

He could remember three things about the rest of that night: He never saw Elle again. Eric put him to bed in an ice-cold guest room and locked him in. Eric kissed him before he fell asleep. He could still feel it like an acid burn on his lips when he drove home.

He turned off his phone, grabbed a cab to the airport to try to get on standby for an earlier flight. 

He woke up when they landed, which was a thing he'd started doing in March when it was all catching up to him and he was always asleep on the plane. He hated the doubled up sick feeling of falling from the dream he was yanked out of and the jolt when the plane stopped falling and gravity had him firmly again. He looked around for Eric and then he remembered. Toronto. No Eric. No Elle.

* * *

Jeff Skinner's sophomore year, will it be all jinx? Someone did use that headline.

He wasn't jinxed on the ice, at least.

Summer was weird. His training went well; he felt like the work was meaningful, with a tangible purpose in a way it never had before. He resented it less. 

Home was good and bad, and he started thinking he needed to have a real place of his own. Toronto real estate had no bargains, so he put it off. 

His dad kept finding projects for him around the house, and his mom would tell him to do this or that since he wasn't busy. He restrained himself from mentioning that clanking around in the basement weight room actually was his job. He mooched around looked pathetic long enough that he got passed from sister to sister until he had to tell them what was up just to get them off his back. 

Just because you know the other side's playbook doesn't mean it isn't effective.

"I don't believe you," Erica said.

"Neither do I," Jillian added, just in case her loud scoffing hadn't clued him in.

"This is not the most unusual thing in the world," Jeff said petulantly.

"You, attracted to a woman. It totally is," Erica said.

"Okay, so it's weird. But I'm serious, she was, it was—unexplainable, I guess."

"So you met this woman and you got that funny feeling in your tummy and now you're all weirded out," Erica said scathingly. "Go find some guy, smile at him, time how long it takes for him to drop to his knees and you'll be all better."

"Oh my god," Jillian said, way too loud, even though he was fairly sure their parents weren't home, "he could totally do that, get some poor sap who'd been wandering around thinking he was straight to go for him without even uttering a word."

"Fuck off, seriously, you guys suck," Jeff said. "Your mockery is hurtful."

"Well why the hell are you so freaked out?" Erica aimed a kick at his leg. 

"Because I fucking am, okay. I just, I've never felt like this and she was really amazing and I didn't even touch her. I wanted to see if her skin was as warm as-" And he shut the fuck up, because otherwise he'd be explaining just whose warm and familiar body he wanted to do the compare and contrast with. Jesus, what a fucking mess.

"Shit, Jeff, you aren't in love with this woman are you?" Jillian said.

"No," he said, because that would be absurd. Of course he wasn't in love with her just like he wasn't in love with Eric. It was just a thing, a small-T thing. Two things. "No one loves anyone," he said forcefully while he shoved Jillian off his bed, which just got him double teamed. He got Erica with a nasty elbow and there was no one around to give him a penalty for it.

Of course, that meant there's no one to stop her from kneeing him in the gut either, but he could still take them both. He was fine. Everything was fine. 

His brother gave him the precious gift of total indifference.

Truth. There really were a lot of guys around that summer who thought fucking a hockey player was hot. 

He took to watching women when he was out. Just checking, making sure there wasn't a certain type that did it for him. Tall, slender, hair that can't decide if it's blonde or brown. Tongue like a blade and a smile full of sharp teeth. A laugh that sounds good even when it really is _at_ him. None of them lit any sparks.

He needed these _things_ sorted out, though. He knew what he had to do so he did it. That's how you get drafted 7th overall when you're not a built like a hockey god—you make a good plan and you work your ass off.

It worked. He never had to actually say anything to Eric, he just drew back, put some space between them. He hung with the younger guys, the rookies and call-ups in the preseason, the youngest guys who stick later on. It was great even though they're all a bit, well, young and mostly of the can't see the gay sort. A couple were tolerantly amused when he flirts with waiters or gets hit on by guys in bars. 

Eric looked a little hurt, a little lost at first, but he visibly got over it. It was for the best.

They roughhoused like kids and hockey players do, him and his new crew, and if he shied away at their touch, no one noticed He was cruising along like he'd been in the league for years and life was good.

Okay, so he was fighting injury and spending too much time in the box and his stats weren't topping any lists, but it wasn't like he was the guy who was supposed to carry the team. Life was good enough.

  

He went to Eric's end of season party and he found out what goes on outside the kitchen. He braved the heat to help grill and play with some of the kids, and he waved at Elle from across the crowded living room. He drank a couple of beers. And avoided Eric. 

He wasn't hungover when he flew home.

  

He'd had a sit down with his agent before he left Raleigh. Told him he wanted to come out to management, make it clear that he was never going to hide and never going to lie. He wanted them to know that upfront.

"This is not how you negotiate a contract," Stan had said seriously. "We lock down the cash first, then we have a chat about this, maybe in the fall, nice and low-key."

"You can't just focus on the dollars when there's other things on the table you want to win," Jeff had told him. 

"What exactly are you trying to win, here, Jeff? A trade?"

Jeff had smiled at him in that way that's supposed to show you aren't moving an inch and Stan had stared back. Stan broke first, slumping back in his chair. 

Truth? The truth is he was rolling the dice. He wanted to know if they wanted him—if they wanted him enough. But he _was_ daring them to make a trade. He could go to LA or fucking Winnipeg or someplace in the desert and never look back. He could.

Stan had made Jeff go in and do the talking since he was fixed on this harebrained scheme, and he was shocked that they'd been shocked. Seriously, he's just not subtle, never has been.

They'd asked him if he wanted to issue a press release, which fuck no, and they'd asked him about You Can Play. And, he knows this is irrational and not the point, but underneath the Cane's jersey he's still Leaf's blue and he fucking hates Brian Burke, so no.

It isn't crazy to have a midlife crisis when you're twenty, not if you're a hockey player. That's what he told himself at the time. After, well, he had to admit he wasn't as fine as he'd wanted to believe.

* * *

The lockout is the best thing that ever happened to Jeff Skinner. No one ever used that line, but it's true.

That summer, he hit the clubs. Hard. It was supposed to be for a couple of weeks at first, but July was burning hot and humid and he hadn't got off the dance floor to hit the weights or the ice. 

He'd missed it. Dancing, not the ice. Having the body for it as much as the doing. He let his body go lean, and he was fitter than he'd ever been. He knew the expectation was that he spend the summer packing on some compensatory muscles. So many pounds for every inch he lacks. He couldn't make himself care.

He didn't go home most nights, never on the weekend, and his parents retreated from him into a vaguely confused disapproval that they never articulated. He'd never had a rebellious period when he was a kid, so maybe he was just a late bloomer. They'd had six kids and micromanaging had never been their style, so they just left him to it. 

When August rolled around, he found out the Hurricanes did seem to want him. No pictures of him doing any of the things he'd filled his summer with had surfaced. Two miracles. Or dumb luck. 

He sat and watched the sun come up over the lake from some guy's downtown condo and made himself think beyond the next bass line. 

He had less than a month to training camp and the last time he'd lifted anything was the skinny twink he'd hoisted up onto his shoulders on the dance floor. On the bright sight, he bet he could smoke the beep test, his flexibility was better than it had been in years and he could give fantastic head.

So, yeah, the lockout saved his skinny ass.

He had a meeting with the coaching staff and they made a deal. He left his agent out of this one, trusted his own negotiating skills. He won't go to Charlotte, but he will get his ass in gear. 

He got a house in Raleigh and a car. He didn't look for clubs, even though he knew where they were. He did look for a trainer. 

The first guy was technically good, but he had no sense of humour, and the second day he asked what church Jeff went to. 

The second guy was into soccer and lacrosse and had a compact lean strength that Jeff wished he could emulate. His name was Joey but everybody called him Ziggy, because why the hell not. Jeff caught him looking, like he was obviously supposed to, and he figured what the hell.

"So, Ziggy, here's the real story," Jeff said. "I need to put on the bulk, but I still want some flexibility." Ziggy nodded like that was all perfectly reasonable. "I still want to be able to get my knees up behind my ears when I want to, you know?"

Ziggy paused for a beat, face totally blank and then he laughed so hard he fell over. "Sure, Jeff, should I write that down in my training plan? We'll need a test for it though."

It all went very well after that. Ziggy told him what to do and he did it.

He was so very hungry to play by the time the season started. It's an old trick, take their favourite toy away and they'll start jonesing for it hard. They'll do anything for it. It worked. They signed. And they were all starving, so they ate up the ice like they'd die if they didn't get it.

Hockey was all he could see. You can narrow your vision down easy if you need to bad enough and, okay he wasn't that oblivious. He could see what he'd done over the summer, what he was doing in the season, filling his life with things that he focused on so closely he couldn't even remember a time when he had room to flirt with Eric or lose sleep over the things he couldn't have.

It worked. It was the only thing that could work.

 

He never saw the hit coming. 

Well, he wasn't sure which hit it was, but he had a concussion and he was out. Every game was precious, every moment on the ice had been made too rare to fuck up. He'd fucking felt great, had been playing well, and now he had to sit in the fucking press box—when he could even stomach getting on the plane.

He missed a trip, missed a practice. More than one, and he was getting frightened because if he couldn't play, he'd have to find something else, something to fill up the space. A club was right out. 

Eventually, he travelled on the road games, sat in the press box and ignored how the lights glaring on the ice hurt his eyes sometimes. 

He looked fine by the time he was sitting on his ass in New York. The reporters were starting to eye him up like maybe the head wasn't the problem, which just goes to show they spend too much making up stories. He was getting close, he could tell, close enough that the tension he'd been afraid was going to swamp him was ebbing away. 

The place was rocking, as it always was, and he watched the first period with a sense of anticipation. Soon, soon, he'd be down there. With Eric. Where he belonged.

He heard her voice just after the horn blew for the first intermission. The sound still ringing in his ears, and he thought he was hallucinating. 

She was real. Really there. Looking at him with tolerant amusement, and he flushed hot all over his body. Jesus, he wanted her so much. 

"Jeff?" she said. Repeated, he figured.

"Elle, ah yes," he said, because he wasn't going to say no to her, even if he didn't know what the question was. She took the chair beside him, openly laughing at him. 

Most people were so careful with him, not wanting to damage the feelings of the poor concussed little boy. As if a concussion were emotional, not physical. He didn't expect her to be gentle with him.

He had a technique, honed from all his time with Eric over the last year and a half. He pulled back, curled in on himself a little, gave off the vibe to not touch, to not get too close. It worked, and Eric stayed at least an arm's length away. Or the width of the room. 

He couldn't try that with her. Didn't want to.

He leaned in. Close enough to smell her perfume. And lemons, he swore to fucking god, he smelled lemons. "What are you doing here?" and because he realized that was not smooth, he added, "such a wonderful surprise." He leaned in more and made his voice as rough as he could, "This place has never looked so good."

She looked startled for a second, and he got that, they'd barely passed a word in months and he was coming on pretty strong. He didn't fucking care. His head didn't hurt anymore, and he wanted to fucking want what he wanted for one night. She'd catch up to the play.

"I was in New York on business, didn't expect to be able to come, so it's a surprise for everyone." Lucky Eric, he thought and shoved thoughts of Eric to the back of his mind where they belonged.

He looked at her for a long beat, because a guy can do that right? He didn't fucking know really, what you could do with women, where bold turned crude, what flew under people's radar. 

"Business?" he said to her, "Did you win?" 

"There's no little red light that comes on, you know."

"I do know. I've been told that exact thing before. I also know that you can tell whether the puck is in."

"Yes, true enough. It went well." She laughed, allowed herself a bit of a sharky smile. "The bastards thought they were going to get some southern gentleman lawyer who got his undergrad degree in religion and passed the bar on the third try."

"New York underestimates Carolina again," Jeff said. "Except we have to get it past Lundqvist to show them who's boss." 

"Well getting it past James Kramer and Joseph Borletto is pretty fucking amazing, but they're not so easy on the eyes as Lundqvist." 

He could imagine her on the ice, playing the body in the subtle way women had to do it. She'd be a greedy centre, scoring all the goals herself and seeing the whites of the goalie's eyes, no matter how pretty they were. "You would have been a great player."

She recoiled a little and went still. 

"I've said the wrong thing."

"Nice girls don't play hockey," she said, and he laughed when he said, "I know, you should meet my sisters."

"I'd like that."

"You would," he said, and they would too. A pretty fantasy. They could all be friends.

He could see her catching his mood swing. And he thought he'd been keeping it at least looking smooth.

"I did figure skating for years," she said, and he looked up in surprise.

"You're too tall," he almost blurted out, but she wouldn't have been when she was a kid. "I didn't know that," he said instead.

"I'm surprised Eric didn't tell you, but then you don't really talk to him anymore, do you?"

Jeff took the hit even though it was against the rules to talk about it like that, talk about _It_ at all, but Elle had never agreed to the rules. Neither had Eric, Jeff had just imposed them on everyone. And she was right, they hadn't talked much.

"How long?" Jeff said. "How long did you skate?" he clarified quickly.

She waved a hand vaguely as if it was all so far in the past she couldn't possibly remember it clearly. "Years. Until I was fifteen anyway. I wanted Ladies, but the coaches all thought I was better suited to Pairs. Then I got bigger and they thought Dance was all I was fit for. I wasn't ever girly enough for them, is the truth, so I quit."

"Neither was I," Jeff said, and she looked at him for a beat before they dissolved into laughter. The second was starting up and some of the media and the Rangers PR guy were eyeing them up, so they got themselves collected enough to watch the action on the ice.

Eric scored, a scrappy mess of a goal that came only after his line fought their way up the ice. Elle grabbed his hand when they got across the blue line onside and squeezed hard when the light went on. 

It was the first time she'd ever touched him.

She was dressed in something silk again. Colourful and stylish. She looked too good for a hockey rink, for all they were an army of suits up in the box—barring the print reporters. 

Truth. She looked too good for him. 

He imagined those New York lawyers thinking she was something they could just brush aside while he watched Eric show the Rangers how hard he was to keep down, and he was losing the sick feeling of falling he'd had since she'd said his name. He was feeling warm and happy. That terrified him in a way he hadn't been since the morning he'd watched the sunrise in Toronto.

Elle asked him to go down in the second intermission and tell Eric she was here. "If you don't mind," she said, like she had some idea that he might mind a lot. What the hell had Eric been saying? 

Some more truth. He knew it was time to man up and get things back to some kind of normal with Eric. He'd been acting like an asshole since the whirlwind of the season had hit them and he needed to stop. 

He got lost once on the way to the locker room; they kept moving the hallways around in the Garden. The coaches were done with whatever they'd had to say by the time he found his way. It was quiet in the room, the guys re-hydrating and waiting for the signal to start clomping down the hallway to the ice. 

Jeff slipped in and leaned on the wall beside Eric. He looked up and his face took on the wary look that had become familiar. "Elle is here," Jeff said, pitching his voice for Eric's ears only.

Eric stood up, towering over Jeff on his skates. Jeff grinned and looked up, way up, and smiled like the old days. Eric surprised him by grinning back at him. "She was sure she wouldn't make it," Eric said.

"Turns out her game was a blowout. They underestimated how tough a Carolina team is."

Eric smiled, and his hand fluttered out like he wanted to touch, but Jeff wasn't regressing that far. He was looking for a middle ground. Plus, his hand still tingled where Elle had grabbed him.

"Can you-" Eric said and frowned. "Are you feeling okay?"

"I'm feeling great," Jeff said truthfully. "Thinking I'm going to insist on a non-contact practice when we get home."

"Would you take Elle back to the hotel for me?" he said, and Jeff raised an eyebrow at him.

"Okay, yes, I know, she doesn't _need_ -"

"If you ask me to look after her, I'm totally giving you up."

"Fuck off, you wouldn't."

"You sure about that?"

"No," Eric said, "I'm not. Just, you know, keep her out of trouble then, since she's in a winning mood, and I'll catch up to you in the hotel bar."

Jeff frowned at that, not sure he wanted to add whiling away the time in a bar to the agenda.

"Oh, that's where you'll be, don't worry."

Jeff told him to get in a winning mood as well and escaped to find the way back up top.

 

Getting a cab with Elle was very easy, and she tossed a smug look at Jeff when he held the door for her. She led him to the bar without hesitation, moving directly to a booth in a quiet corner. Several heads turned to watch them pass.

It was weird, having men look at him like walking a pace behind her made him an object of envy.

She ordered a gin martini and he ordered tonic and lemon. She raised a brow at him and he tapped his temple. 

"You're behaving yourself," she said.

"Can't afford to lose any days this year. More than I have to."

She made humming noise and frowned. "I'm not a fan of the new contract," she said curtly.

"I'm not a fan of the schedule, but it beats the alternative."

"Maybe."

"I ran away from Toronto so I didn't have to hear about the damn negotiations all the time," Jeff warned her. Which wasn't even remotely true. He ran away, but not because of that.

"Fine, I'll disapprove over here quietly. What did you do, you didn't play?"

Jeff grinned at her and she slowly raised an eyebrow. Their drinks came and Jeff sipped his, savouring the bitterness. 

"I misbehaved pretty severely in the summer," he told her. 

She leaned back and looked at him. No judgement on her face, hands open and at her sides—the sort of listening pose that made people spill their guts. For a few hundred dollars you could go to a seminar in Toronto where they'd teach you how to do it. He'd gone with his sister one year to take notes when she'd cracked her wrist in a game. 

"I spent most of my time clubbing. Just dancing," he added to bring down the surprised eyebrow, "I barely drank and I'm a good boy who stays away from the chemicals." 

"That is the most boringly responsible, high-achiever misbehaving I've ever heard of."

" _Mostly_ dancing." 

"Even so," she said. "So you showed up having committed the sin of inappropriate exercise and not bulking up." She waved off his look of surprise. "I spent a whole summer up north when Eric and I first got married. I heard more than I ever needed to know about body mass and protein shakes and the only thing worse than the skinless chicken breasts for every meal was the black flies. All of them were there that summer, gradually getting bigger and bigger—some more than others, granted. It was bizarre."

"Sounds like my house. Only we have mosquitoes and more lawyer talk and red meat."

"Sounds heavenly," she said and signalled for a refill. "Why'd you do it?"

Jeff glanced up at her. No one had ever asked him that. The coaches when he showed up had been disappointed, but he'd had time to fix it and they didn't care about reasons. His parents had pretended a boyfriend was the reason he wasn't coming home. Maybe they believed it. His sisters had given him troubled looks, but never pressed him.

"Complicated reasons," he said, because the simple answer is always dangerous to believe in too hard. "I missed it. The endless hanging out that junior hockey had going for it. Gabe and I used to sneak off to Toronto and hit the clubs sometimes, the all ages nights, because I could never pass for 19."

"Can you now," Elle asked dryly, and he stuck his tongue out. 

"I also wanted to get laid. Truth," he said suddenly watching her watching him unburden his soul. "I realized what I wanted was to play hockey but have the body I would have had if I'd chosen differently when I was a kid, which is impossible and kind of vain, and I don't—didn't care."

"You know exactly what I mean when I say you're a high-achiever. Your whole family is, aren't they?"

He nodded.

"So you know that having a hyper-focus on the job is not exactly uncommon?"

Jeff nodded again. Since the day he'd chosen hockey, it had been like that. All one thing. Last summer was the first time that one thing hadn't been hockey. 

"It's also not uncommon to get to a point where you flip that focus onto something other than the job."

"You're telling me I need balance in my life," he said.

"I'm telling you that if you don't get it, you might decide that a life spent clubbing all night is exactly what you want to excel at. And to truly excel, you will need the chemicals."

Jeff sighed at her. He knew all this, he was working on it; she didn't know it, but even sitting there talking to her and not freaking out was working on it.

"Have you ever even had a boyfriend?" she asked, and he almost got up and walked away.

"You're not my mother," he snapped.

"I'm aware of that, but-"

"How many women did Eric date before he married you?"

She looked at him like he'd hit her or, more accurately, like she wanted to hit him. "Interesting way around you asked that question. I mean obviously, I'm the type to have shopped around hard right?"

Eric picked that auspicious moment to arrive, because Jeff's life was just that fucking awesome sometimes.

"Hi, guys," he said sitting down and looking around warily. 

"We're fighting," Elle said sharply.

"I'm getting that," Eric said.

"No, it's fine," Jeff said and then had to wait out the awkward silence while the waiter came by. He filled the time by trying to decide if Ziggy counted. He decided if he had to think about it, the answer was no. Gabe didn't count because straight guys who hang out while you pick up don't count, and Andy didn't count because the guy on the team you fool around with when you're 17 never counts. 

"I pushed," Elle said.

"Yeah," Jeff answered, and he looked at Eric who had slid into the booth and wrapped one arm around Elle, as natural as breathing, because that's what they did—who they were. Who everyone expected them to be. 

He had spent a lot of nights during his first year with Eric pressed up close in a bar, a couple of times in the same position. She dropped her hand to rest on Eric's thigh and he could see her fingers squeeze. Silent communication. They'd done that too.

"But you were right," Jeff said, "and I'm being a dick about it, so..." He made a show of downing his drink and then made his excuses. 

No one begged him to stay.

* * *

Jeff Skinner's fourth year in the NHL is where he has to mature and step things up a level. Someone really did use that line. And it was true enough.

He'd nearly gone to Sweden for the summer with Gabe. 

In some parallel universe there's a version of him who's got a hot blond boyfriend he makes dirty skype calls to on off days. 

It's telling that even in his imagination his boyfriend is not really there. 

He stayed in Raleigh most of the off season. He hit Toronto for two weeks, went clubbing once, symbolically, and hooked back up with Ziggy when he flew back south like a confused goose going the wrong way at the wrong time.

Ziggy actually had a boyfriend, so they didn't fuck on the weight bench anymore. Well, not often.

He had no trouble finding the net. That's what they should have said about that year. He couldn't find his way onto an Olympic team, he couldn't find his way to a decent plus/minus. He didn't know who the hell he was playing with from one night to the next, but he could get it in.

He couldn't find his way with Eric either, even though he tried.

Because Elle was right. He'd always handled his life by slicing off the sharp corners. Occupational hazard. No time for school, no time for friends who aren't team. No time for life.

He had no experience with fitting the parts of himself together into a whole. He could become a club kid or fall into the thing with Ziggy, but then hockey came round again and he had to shuck off everything else and give himself up to the schedule. 

It was better, it was. He was getting it together enough that he could hit a club sometimes when they were at home, read a book once or twice. He even had coffee with Ziggy and his friends sometimes. But then he'd have a road trip, and everything else faded away.

He got on the bus and off the bus, on the plane and off the plane, he laced 'em up and he stripped off. He went to team meals and bars, and he talked to Eric like they were grown ups who could totally carry on a conversation that had nothing to do with flirting or possessiveness or hero worship. But he couldn't get all the parts of himself together at the same time. 

He blamed Jordan Staal. 

Eric welcomed Jeff back with open arms, not that he'd ever gone farther than just out of reach. But Eric wanted to touch, to sit too close and to whisper scandalous and stupid things in his ear when they went out. 

And Eric wanted to do all that with his brother sitting next to him. And, Okay. Maybe he was blaming the wrong Staal. 

Jordan had a good line in noncommittal. He never said anything negative, didn't frown in disapproval, was ready to crack a joke, even to make fun of Eric for his need to keep Jeff inside his arm's length. But he was a silent rebuke to Jeff all the same.

Which was fucking hilarious, because if Jeff could have one wish granted it would be to have Eric stop fucking touching him because he was burning up with wanting.

There was only one cure for it, and Jeff was waiting to be home with an off day to hit the clubs to stay up 'til sunrise and feel the burn in every muscle in his body when he climbed into bed in the daytime.

But road trips were made to torment men's souls.

They hit some place in Calgary they'd been to before, and he was expecting cowboy hats and watery beer like always, but they got glitter and a pulsing beat. The place was packed with university students and it was a very bent crowd.

Most of the guys were not in their natural element. Understatement of the year. And some of them took off with Ward looking for something a little more Blue Rodeo. But Jeff stayed and that meant Eric stayed and that meant Jordan stayed. Half a dozen others wanted to play tourist to the sort of youth they'd never had, so they trouped up to a mezzanine and captured a table.

He sat with them for one round, his a soda water and lime which he took shit for, but it wasn't a night for drinking, not for him. It was the first time in a long time he'd sat close enough to feel Eric's breathing and the want he felt burning in him was for something else.

"You going to?" Eric said, and Jeff looked for any sign of censure and didn't see it. It wouldn't have stopped him. 

"Oh, yeah," he said and ran down the stairs and dove in.

There's a point at which the people become bodies, then almost disembodied, and it's like the air is thick and the gravity is turned up. The music recedes and fills him up both, and he's alone. There's no sense of being observed or _with_ other people, he's utterly alone and free and flying.

The fact that he could get to that state without drugs is the real reason he didn't take them.

He almost got there that night in Calgary, but he couldn't shake the knowledge that Eric could see him. Was watching him. He wasn't, the mass of people too dense to see the man for the crowd. But when Jeff closed his eyes and reached for the feeling of free floating whatever it is that he craves, that works like going over the boards does, he can't shake the idea that Eric was right behind him. 

 

They sent Jordan in after him. And he wasn't alone inside his own head anymore when Jordan found him. 

Jordan was furious, and Jeff couldn't stop laughing at him. He didn't know whether the problem was the guy he was wrapped around, the beard burn all over his face, the late, late hour, or all of the above. He was so gripped by the hilarity of his life that Jordan started hissing accusations of him being high.

As soon as he saw the rest of the guys waiting by the door he launched himself at Eric, still laughing. Jordan was still cursing. Eric caught him, hands cold on his hot skin, and Eric whispered something, but his ears were ringing too much for him to hear. He could see Jordan's mouth working like he was chewing out a ref, and Jeff thought that was funny too.

Outside was cold and the air was dry and thin and it ripped the moisture out of his mouth. He couldn't get spit enough to talk. He got stuck in the front of the cab where it was cold and lonely. In the back, Jordan pummelled Eric with low voiced imprecations. Jeff was coming down hard.

He didn't sleep when he got safely inside his hotel room. He leaned on the window and waited for the sun to rise, the glass cold against his face and the heater below scorching his legs. He wanted to call Elle. Could you call it a drunk dial when he was this stone cold?

 

The Olympic break wasn't the break they needed. They needed the season to end. 

Eric looked beat up and worn down. He let Jordan play captain more and more, and the rest of the team drifted away from the centre. It was a pointless grind for anyone not playing for a contract or a trade even if they all knew how hard you were supposed to pretend otherwise. 

They got a shutout in Florida in March and they went out to celebrate their meaningless win in a bar painted like the Ducks arena and filled with kids who hadn't straggled home from March break. Jeff heard Ontario in half the voices and he drank more than he had in a long time.

Eric looked happy. Even though his cheekbones were too prominent and the pain showed in the clench of his jaw. Nothing that couldn't be cured with a week of too much sleep and too much food. He was laughing at everyone's bad jokes and trading insults with Jordan. It was a song they all knew how to sing, words as familiar as the anthems.

Jeff went to the bar for another beer and turned to watch Eric and Jordan, and he saw a handful of women doing the same. He switched to shots, not caring what flavour.

He stayed at the bar so long, he'd scored a seat and accumulated a scatter of empties in front of him. 

"You fading on me, Skinny?" Eric said in his ear. 

Eric draped himself over his back, manhandled him up straight on the stool he'd been slumped on, one hand splayed out on Jeff's belly, pressing him back into Eric's heat. Jeff's shirt was tight and short, riding up. If Eric wanted to find skin, he'd have no trouble. 

Jeff sucked in a breath that smelled of Eric and beer, and he thought about lifting up his feet to push off the bar, crash them both to the floor. 

"Falling," Jeff said. 

Eric laughed at him, and when he spoke, Jeff could feel lips on his skin. "You've been a good boy lately, this is what happens when you're bad."

"Never could hold my liquor."

"I got you." Eric held him tighter, and this couldn't possibly look like anything other than it was. "I think I should put you to bed." Along with all their plausible deniability, presumably.

"No." He could see their reflection in a woman's face across the bar. Her lips parted, eyes sleepy with lust. Jeff needed to get out, out of there. 

"Not like it's the first time," Eric said, which stopped him cold. But where Eric went, Jordan went, and Jeff took the out. 

"Jordan," Jeff said sliding off the stool and eeling out of Eric's embrace, "You can, you can-" 

"Get your drunk ass back to the hotel?" Jordan said.

Eric tried to argue, but Jordan had brought reinforcements and Alex Semin steered Eric away. Jordan had Jeff's arm in a tight grip and they were swimming in the humid Florida night.

Jeff lost track of things while they were in a cab, he thought he was in Toronto and it was summer, but Jordan wouldn't want to fuck—likely, probably, so what were they doing? Jeff saw the hotel and remembered where they were, felt that his legs had gone to lead, and all he wanted was to sleep until it was somewhen else.

"Thanks," Jeff said when he fetched up at his hotel room door.

"I didn't do it for you," Jordan said. "I did it to save Eric from having to turn you down."

Jeff turned and leaned against the door, let the anger wash through the path cleared by the liquor. Jordan stood and glared at him over crossed arms.

He'd heard Jordan say something about Elle once.—the casual kind of snide dig he'd heard before, from the guys, their wives, their buddies, the front office staff.

He hated Jordan Staal when they weren't on the ice, even if he had to love him on it.

"You saved the wrong person," Jeff said. And he doubted Jordan got it, and he didn't care. It wouldn't have been Jeff doing the asking. He flipped Jordan off and went to crash.

No question, that night it was a drunk dial.

* * *

Eric had his party in the spring again. Early again.

Jeff would have run away to Sweden this time for sure, but Gabe was still in it. He didn't think Toronto was the place for him right then, and Raleigh was nice in the spring, so Jeff dug out his rollerblades and skated around the city all afternoon while everyone else was living their lives. 

He slept 10 hours a day and didn't talk to anyone.

He showed up at Eric's party late, drifted in and found the biggest crowd in the living room. He stood at the edge of the room, near enough to the patio doors that he could escape if he wanted. Someone handed him a beer and he carried it around for a while. 

He'd moved to a doorway in shadow when Elle came into the living room and sat down to talk to someone he didn't know. Someone's new girlfriend. Elle was tapping one fingernail against her glass and her body was rigid with tension. She smiled, big and wide like they did it in the South. 

Alex took up position on the opposite side of the doorway and raised his beer in greeting. "You look relaxed," he said. "The rest of us look like shit."

Jeff shrugged. "Just got some sun this last week, that's all."

"You have summer plans?" 

"Sweden maybe," he said. 

Elle said something and a couple of people laughed, not the new girl though. 

Eric came in and sat on the arm of her chair and laid his hand on her back, up between her shoulders. Jeff could feel it on his own body, the weight of Eric's hand, the subtle pressure that said he was there and that it was all okay and that no, Jeff couldn't tear off down the ice and kill whoever had enraged him. 

"Or I might stay here," Jeff said, and the new girl turned in Jeff's general direction and frowned. 

"Raleigh in summer?" Alex said dubiously. "I would never. Worse than DC. You have boyfriend here?"

Elle rose from the chair and strode out of the room, heading for the kitchen. Eric slid into her seat and smiled at everyone while he scanned the room. 

"Not exactly," Jeff said, and dropped back into the shadows and cut through to the kitchen via the dining room.

Elle was slicing lemons. The gin bottle was open.

"I'll take one of those, if you bear in mind I barely ever drink these days," he said.

"Not never," she said without missing a beat with the knife.

"Not never." He dumped the beer he hadn't touched and leaned on the bar and watched her make him a weak G&T. "What did she say to you?"

"I saw you lurking," Elle said.

"I know you did, what did she say?"

Elle handed him his drink and let their fingers brush. She stayed close on the other side of the bar and held her lawyer-strength drink in one hand while she gestured with the other. "I have a list," she said, by way of not answering him again. "Because I'm just that kind of person. It's getting unmanageably long, and I've been thinking I might have to write it down. I'm not sure if I'm exactly _that_ kind of person, though." She took a sip. "I don't try to remember what they've said, just that they did say something."

"Things about you." 

"Not just me," she said quietly.

Jeff laughed at that. "I've stopped trying to be subtle, I'm no good at it."

"So I hear," she said and looked up at him and then turned away. "I can't kick them out is the thing that pisses me off. I choked on that the first time I heard some asshole say something cutting in my own fucking house and I had to smile at them and hand them food I'd paid a caterer good money for."

Jeff sipped his drink and put it down. He had no comfort to offer her. No power to make the assholes of the world more careful with their tongues.

"I didn't think you'd come this year," she said.

"Almost didn't."

"Eric would be hurt if you hadn't."

"I seem to keep doing that." Jeff watched her until she looked at him. "I don't like it."

She sighed and tossed back the rest of her drink, went to make another. "Sometimes you don't have a choice." She slammed the gin bottle down and it sloshed. 

She turned and looked at him, and if they were on the same line he'd expect her to be taking a trip to the box on the next shift. "I'm tired of not having a choice," Jeff said. "Losing sleep thinking about what I could be."

Truth. He'd been weaned on the idea that if he worked hard, he could get whatever he desired. It had proved true so often he started believing he was entitled.

He let the want out of the place he kept it penned up in. All the love and the lust and the hunger, all of it heating him from within. If they were on the same line there'd be a brawl on the next shift and they'd be in it together and it would be glorious. 

"Jesus," she said and stepped back. 

"Jeff, you are here," Eric said from behind him and Jeff tilted his chin up at Elle looked at her for a long, long beat before he turned to Eric.

"Fuck," Eric said and stepped forward.

Nobody moved, nobody said anything. He could hear Elle breathing hard behind him, heard the clink of the ice in her glass. Eric looked at him beseechingly, as if Jeff was supposed to know what the hell came next.

"Your play," Jeff said and pushed out past Cam Ward and Jordan who were crowding into the kitchen, trash talking about who was the better man at the grill. 

 

They came the next day, late in the afternoon. Jeff hadn't booked a flight anywhere, but the urge to run, to find a crowd to be alone in was powerful. 

Eric had thrown on basketball shorts and a t-shirt that flopped loose on his end of season body. Elle was in work clothes, armour made of silk. She'd kicked her shoes off at the door, mixing her messages.

They stood in the living room. and stared at each other. Jeff had on nothing but a pair of shorts and it felt like their glances were catching on his skin.

"Awkward," Eric said.

Jeff looked at Elle's handbag she'd tossed onto the coffee table. It was expensive leather, but ugly and oversized. Not a briefcase, but almost as big. Curious. Jeff pointed at it. "Is there a restraining order in that?"

She closed the yard between them, smiling, not quite the shark, not quite the woman who was amused by him to varying degrees. 

She was exactly his height. 

Her nails scraped at his scalp when they kissed like she wanted to dig into his brain and figure him out. Someone needed to. 

He tried to slow it down, needing to sort out the reality from his fantasies. It was different from a man. And it was exactly the same. 

She had her hands all over him, her nails scraping his skin making him shudder. He wanted to just feel it. Or maybe he was just afraid to open his eyes.

Dreams of falling are memories of when you could fly—someone told him that once. 

What did it mean then, when you dreamt you were caught before you hit the ground?

Eric's hands were hot on his skin, sliding down and pulling him back close against his body. Jeff had been there before, but never quite like that. Never with Eric whispering such things in his ear and Elle pulling away from his mouth and leaning back to see, but never slipping out of reach.

He watched her watching him. Them. Eric wrapped one hand around his cock and squeezed and stroked and Jeff shuddered and made such sounds and didn't worry his knees would give out because he wasn't holding himself up alone. 

He was limp after, just from that. Eric wiped his hand on Jeff's belly, rubbing his own come into his skin. It made him flush. Eric was grinding slow against his ass while Elle caressed his face, slipping her thumb into his mouth. She made a sharp noise when he bit her. She paid him back with a kiss full of sharp teeth. 

"Someone needs to fuck me," he said. 

Truth. His knees really were going to give out if he just stood there and let them _do_ things to him.

"Do you care who?" Elle asked, and he scored himself a point for guessing what was in that bag. Well, he'd hoped.

"I'm not choosing," he said. He unwound from Eric and met his predatory gaze for a long moment. He pulled off his shorts and dropped them where he stood and sauntered towards his bedroom. He put himself on his stomach in the middle of the bed. They could decide what to do with him. 

There was a touch, not skin, but latex. 

"Nails," Elle said softly. Gloves he realized. 

He opened up to her. It was easy with Eric sprawled out beside him, one hand stroking down his spine. Jeff settled with his head on his crossed arms and turned to look at Eric. He was burnt away to bone, serious and intent, but his grin made him young again, full of mischief and lust.

Jeff took it when she fucked into him; he got his knees and elbows under himself and hung his head down and reached for the right feeling in his head while he sought the right angle with his body. He hadn't done this in a very long time, and he'd forgotten how unyielding it would be. But she could wait forever for him, and she was patient. 

Eric tilted his head up and watched him, an inscrutable frown on his face. Did he like Jeff like this, or did he want the easy bliss he'd shown before? What did he see? Lips for kissing, it turned out.

She wasn't gentle. 

"Oh, fuck yeah," he said and he wished for a headboard to scramble up and hold on to. She pounded him sharp and fast and he banged back as well as he could bracing against the wall.

He was, or course, achingly hard again, but Eric was all hands off and greedy eyes.

She could go for as long as she wanted, but she was only warming him up. When she got him all the way to hot she pulled out carefully. 

Eric manhandled him over on to his back and slid in in one thrust, a wicked grin in place of any apology for the rough handling. He'd done this before. No question.

Eric was gentle. Well, after a little bit more of the rough, he cooled it down to something too slow.

Because they were tying to drive him mad. 

And no one would touch him or let him touch himself and Eric was rotating his hips and slowly thrusting, and Jeff _could_ come from just this, but it would take a long time. 

Begging didn't get him anywhere.

Eric pleased himself and then lay spent beside him, occupying his lips, putting his hands everywhere on Jeff's body but where he wanted them. He went along with it. He was still falling.

Elle's hand caressed his face and turned his lips away from Eric. She didn't move to kiss him, just looked at him, serious and almost sad. She was curled up beside him, and Eric reached across him and laid his hand on her breast, thumbing her nipple. 

"Trust me," Jeff said to her. "I want you."

She frowned, slightly, and he caught her arm in a grip that wasn't careful. "You have to believe. You have to take the leap." Because he didn't know if this was where he crashed to Earth, she had to believe for him that he was still airborne.

She straddled him, and he ran his palms on her thighs. Soft skin, hard muscles. Not the first shaved leg he'd ever had under his palm. 

It was strange, that first time. That's the truth.

She flexed around him and rode him while Eric worked her with his fingers, practised and then smug at his quick success. Her orgasm drew him back in and let him loose, and he thrust with the strength he had left while she pulled at him like the tide.

He caught her when she fell to the bed and let her bury her face in his shoulder. Eric forced one arm under him and held on to them both. 

It wasn't particularly comfortable. 

"I'm not going anywhere, you know," Jeff said.

"I know," Eric said against the side of his face. "I just want to hold on for a while."

Jeff turned onto his side, and Eric pulled him tight against his chest, his nose buried in Jeff's hair, one leg slung over pinning him to the mattress. Elle slowly drifted closer, body uncurling to stretch in front of him. Eric's hand found her breast with no sight to guide it. She rolled her eyes and tucked in closer.

He slowly became alarmed at the force of Eric's full-body death grip. He looked again at the past few years, falling into Eric's orbit and pulling away, never all the way, never trying to, then letting himself be drawn back in. Always falling. And it was painfully familiar looking at it all again, the things he'd done, the things he hadn't. But it was also like the film had been flipped over or the angle shifted, and he saw things he'd never looked at before. 

Elle watched him thinking, kissed him softly when he closed his eyes to shut out her direct regard. "We'll feed him when he wakes up," she whispered. "He'll be fine."

They'd all be fine, Jeff told himself. They just needed to believe they hadn't crashed.

* * *

Jeff Skinner's fifth year in the NHL is where it all came together. No one's going to write that line, but Jeff wants it enough to work for it. He doesn't know he needs luck.


End file.
